Waking up from a five-hundred year sleep left her with no idea who she is, so she travels to the European city of Vigrid, whose spiritual make-up is getting uncomfortably close to that of Paradiso. There, she hopes to find the mysterious "Right Eye," the other half of the "Eyes of the World" brooch she possesses. There she meets another Witch named Jeanne who seems to know more about Bayonetta than herself, an Intrepid Reporter named Luka who has a long-lived grudge against her, and a seemingly lost little girl named Cereza. Her memories return progressively as she proceeds through the city while kicking a lot of ass.

In 2014, Nintendo published the sequel Bayonetta 2 as an exclusive for the Wii U (Sega still owns the property). For Wii U owners who never played the original, initial copies of Bayonetta 2 came with an Updated Re-release of the original Bayonetta, effectively giving two games for the price of one, though later copies only have Bayonetta 2 on its own.note The retail version has it on a separate disk, while the digital version has it as a digital download from the eShop, available at a discount if you buy it with the sequel. This partnership with Nintendo and a fan-poll lead to Bayonetta being announced as the last DLC fighter for Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U.

The video game features the following tropes:

Achievement System: Achievement/Trophy data is accessible from the in-game menu, where they are referred to as "Umbran Tears of Blood". Other Umbran Tears of Blood are items found in the possession of crows hidden throughout various levels.

Action Mom: Cereza may not be her daughter, but Bayonetta protects her like one. Subverted when it turns out that Cereza is actually Bayonetta as a child.

Affably Evil: The Cardinal Virtues are generally very polite and respectful when they speak to Bayonetta — certainly more polite and respectful than she is to them.

All There in the Manual: Information about various topics in the game are found in literal manuals that you can pick up on the field and read. Plus there's The Hierarchy of Laguna that has info on all the enemies in the game. According to The Wonderful 101, Bayonetta really is a nun (that habit wasn't just a cover), and Jeanne is a high-school teacher.

Alternate History: A number of historical events played out different due to the presences of the witches, sages, and angels ... for instance; Cleopatra was actually an Umbra Witch, and a very odd species of angel, the Irenic which looks like an automobile, apparently visited the human world once and its presence was what inspired the industrial revolution.

Always a Bigger Fish: Part of how Bayonetta defeats the below mentioned Jubileus. To put it into perspective, the demon she summons, Queen Sheba, is as huge compared to Jubileus as Jubileus is compared to Bayonetta.

At the beginning of the Epilogue, you play as Jeanne as she rushes to save Bayonetta from being used as a power source for Jubileus. It doesn't sound like much unless you know that you spend it riding a motorcycle up a disintegrating in-flight rocket into space while killing angels.

You can also unlock Jeanne and Little King Zero as playable characters. The former can't activate Witch Time as easily and the latter is a Two Hit Point Wonder. Makes the game a bit harder in both cases.

Animorphism: Bayonetta acquires a few shapeshifting abilities: A black panther for enhanced running (and leaping) speed, a crow for limited flight ability, and a swarm of bats for evasion. Jeanne has all these same abilities, except she turns into a lynx instead of a panther, an owl instead of a crow, and moths instead of bats. Due to her pact with the Infernal Demon Madama Butterfly, the shadow Bayonetta casts forms a butterfly.

"May Jubileus, the Creator, grace you!" This is said by all the Cardinal Virtues Bayonetta faces, and becomes Fridge Horror when you realize they're praying for Jubileus to obliterate her when she wakes up, seeing as her grace will destroy the universe. It's the closest an angel can probably come to saying "go to hell".

"The Left Eye, our treasured Left Eye, will never fall into the hands of another!"

"My dear, sweet child. Fear not, for I am always watching over you." This is brought up again in Bayonetta 2 with much more poignancy.

Armed Legs: Guns. On. Feet. The Durga set when equipped to the legs and Odette ice skates cleave closer to usual use of this trope. It's unknown if the leg-mounted Lt. Col. Kilgore tonfas fall under this or a particularly over-the-top example of Pistol-Whipping, though.

Artistic License – Gun Safety: Notoriously bad for this. Firing indiscriminately and wildly while fighting (especially in enclosed spaces) is ridiculously unsafe in itself, but anyone who twirls pistols during punch combos, wields shoe guns that apparently fire themselves, and adjusts their glasses with the business end of a pistol is just asking to be killed by misfire. For instance, shortly after meeting both Luka and Cereza, Bayonetta fires her guns (her HIGH CALIBER Scarborough Fair guns) within inches of both of their ears. In real life, that would blow out their eardrums and cause long-term hearing problems. Considering the nature of the game, this is all easily explained away with magic. And while Cereza and Luka are still on the human plane of reality, Bayonetta's fighting occurs in Purgatorio, where she can't be seen, heard, or felt (except by Cereza) by those in the human plane.

Author Appeal: As Mari Shimazaki stated in her character design blog, "Glasses! This was something that Kamiya-san really pushed for, as he was aiming to differentiate Bayonetta from other female characters and give her a sense of mystery and intelligence. Of course, I think it is just because he likes girls with glasses."

Awesomeness Meter: After completing each verse in a chapter, you're given a grade, from Stone to Platinum, on each of three categories: combo, time, and damage received. Based on your grades for these categories, you are then given an overall grade for that verse, which ranges from Stone, to Pure Platinum, which you only receive for getting a Platinum in each category. At the end of a level, you are also given a final grade on each chapter as a whole (taking into account number of deaths and items used), ranging again from Stone to Pure Platinum, which is only awarded if each verse grade is Pure Platinum. Each chapter grade is accompanied by an appropriate statue (a Stone Enzo, Bronze Cereza, Silver Luka, Gold Rodin, Platinum Bayonetta, or Pure Platinum Bayonetta holding a moon).

Luka has his moments a few times too, usually involving a stolen vehicle of some kind.

Bilingual Dialogue: Bayonetta's conversation with the angels is this, she speaks English while the angels speak whatever their language is (probably Enochian).

Black and Grey Morality: On one side, you have the forces of Heaven, who are not above slaughtering humans and merging realities for their own ends. On the other side, you have the forces of Hell, whose reputation precedes them.

Blocking Stops All Damage: Bayonetta can equip an accessory that allows her to block enemy attacks and counter if done well. Her Mirror Boss Jeanne has the ability to block attacks too, even in the middle of a combo.

Blood Knight: Sure she has to kill angels to keep demons from dragging her to Hell, but it's pretty clear she enjoys punishing angels a bit too much. Nearly every fight scene begins and ends with a smile on her face (with a few very serious exceptions) and, other than recovering her memories, she states that one of the initial reasons she was going to Vigrid was because the weak angels being sent at her had her bored.

Rodin. Possibly one of the hardest bonus bosses in a hack and slash game ever. Also might be the best example of this boss in a game like this that isn't really story-related.

A second bonus boss can be fought at the end of Angel Slayer mode. It turns out to be Bayonetta herself.

Bonus Level Of Hell: The Lost Chapter "Angel Slayer", that you unlock by completing all the Alfheim challenges. Going through dozens of waves of enemies and insane bosses (fighting two Jeannes on Hard setting being one of the easiest) wouldn't be fun if you could use healing items, would it? Also the difficulty setting starts on Normal and increases progressively, ending with Non-Stop Climax. And if you die, don't expect you can just select "yes" at the continue screen cause there are no check-points: you are expected to do all of it in one shot. Nintendo Hard indeed.

The intro ends with Bayonetta calling out to Jeanne, who responds "I'm okay!" They then pose back to back as they plummet off a cliff face amidst falling rubble. After the final boss fight, the two witches repeat this exact dialogue exchange (complete with pose), only this time the rubble is Jubileus' statue fragments rather than rocks, and they are plummeting towards the planet rather than a canyon.

The funeral scene in the ending invokes this trope several times:

First, the conversation between Bayonetta and Luka. When they first meet, Luka tells Bayonetta that rosemary equates to remembrance, contrasting it with Bayonetta's amnesia. Bayonetta retorts by saying that rosemary is a demon repellent. In the ending, Luka places large bunches of rosemary by the grave and, recalling them as demon repellent, says he hopes they will help her in Hell. After the fake funeral, Bayonetta remarks that rosemary's symbol of remembrance now suits her.

On a lesser note: In the Prologue, when Rodin wakes up from his fake funeral, he blasts the lid of his coffin up, only for it to land and break on his head. In the ending's fake funeral scene, when Bayonetta wakes up, she blasts the coffin lid, which again lands and breaks on Rodin's head.

In the prologue, Bayonetta lands on Enzo's car, breaking it. During the credits, Bayonetta and Jeanne land on Enzo's brand new car, breaking that one too.

Boss in Mook Clothing: Gracious and Glorious are exactly the same as Grace and Glory but are faster, more aggressive, more damaging, and you can't normally get Witch Time off of them. Expect to see the four of them a lot in hard mode. Plus they have no problem with breaking out of your combos, while theirs (particularly their midair ones) require equal parts perfect timing and sheer luck to dodge out of.

Boss-Only Level: Battles against each of the Four Cardinal Virtues are entire levels unto themselves (though one serves up a few enemies before the boss).

Every time a new type of enemy appears (except Gracious and Glorious, whose intro got cut out simply because the developers didn't have time to get it in), they're accompanied with a short cut scene and a Pastel-Chalked Freeze Frame that gives the name and class of the enemy. It's also used to remind the player to put on an appropriate Oh Crap! face when Umbra Witch: Jeanne finally gets her subtitles after you've already fought her three times, and Dea: Jubileus. Also, all the enemies in the game show up in alphabetical order, with the exception of "Ardor," who doesn't show up until Chapter V, and "Irenic," which is only in Chapter VIII. They start with "Affinity" and "Applaud" and go all the way up to "Kinship."

Rodin. Somebody with a title like "The Infinite One" probably isn't one to be messed with.

Boss Warning Siren: Level 14 has the music stop and a siren resounding just before you fight Mini Bosses Courage and Temperance. Comes along with this entire Shoot 'em Up section being an homage to Space Harrier. Even said siren is a Space Harrier reference; check the soundtrack listing and you'll see it identified as Wiwi Jumbo (Heaven Sent Mix). Wiwi Jumbo was the name of the boss of Space Harrier's seventeenth (and penultimate) level, Nark.

Bragging Theme Tune: "Mysterious Destiny" is mostly this, although the lyrics are not only about Bayonetta's awesomeness.

Brainwashed and Crazy: This is the reason Jeanne has it in for Bayonetta for the majority of the game. If the other tropes on this page haven't clued you in, she gets better.

Bayonetta: If there's two things I hate in this world, it's cockroaches and crying babies. beat Well, I suppose a crying baby cockroach would be truly terrible.

Bruce Lee Clone: Quite possibly the only female version of this trope in existence that does it correctly, Bayonetta becomes this when you give her the nunchuck like weapons, Sai Fung. When you do the basic 5 punch combo, she even does Bruce Lee's Kiai. It's made even more awesome by the fact that the nunchucks have guns in them. The name "Sai Fung" is even a reference to Bruce Lee.

Bullet Hole Door: Bayonetta shoots a heart-shaped one for Luka and Cereza through a security gate that has just been closed.

Any "Witch Time" sequence. Note that some of these are strictly timed affairs, with the "clock" measuring things not in minutes and seconds, but seconds and fractions of a second. That scene in the prologue where you have to execute three Torture attacks? It all happened within five (non-bullet-time) seconds.

The Lumen Sages have a counterpart to Witch Time known as "Light Speed". Balder uses this against Bayonetta in the opening cutscene to Chapter XVI after she fires a few bullets at him. He stops time and turns the bullets to face her before letting time continue.

Car Fu: Jeanne's first appearance in chapter two and in her third boss battle. In certain levels, Bayonetta can lift and throw cars at enemies using her hair and magic.

Catfight: Bayonetta vs Jeanne, or any Joy angel (as they take a female humanlike form).

Cat Girl: When equipped with the specified perfume, Durga causes Bayonetta to gain a tail and/or a pair of cat ears made of flames or lightning.note The precise piece you get depends on where you have Durga equipped; hands gives Bayonetta cat ears, feet gives her a cat's tail. You need to have bought the second pair and equip them to both slots to get ears and tail.

Censor Steam: Always, considering her clothes are more or less her hair. When Bayonetta uses a Climax Attack, her hair takes a Censor Steam shape spiraling around her body as most of is used to power the attack.

Chainsaw Good: Bayonetta's Torture Attack against Harmony-class angels depicts her whipping out a chainsaw three times her size from Hammerspace. And unlike other torture devices, she gets to keep it afterward, mostly because it's the only one that's an actual melee weapon and because the said enemy doesn't have any weapons to drop. This is both foreshadowed and lampshaded by one of Rodin's quotes when entering his bar: "I don't care how many times you ask. I'm not putting a chainsaw onyour arm."

Chest Monster: A particularly cruel example occurs in Chapter IX, where you have to open chests to get parts of a key. One of them has a Grace inside, another has Glory, and a third chest contains a Fairness.

The Chosen One: Bayonetta is "The Left Eye", the darkness that makes up half of Jubileus. Her father is "The Right Eye", the light of Jubileus. Together they make up "The Eyes of the World".

Clock Tower: The playable introductory scene takes place on a clock tower...as it tumbles from an impossibly high cliff face. This clock tower shows up again in Chapter IX; it's where you start the level. Bayonetta remarks that it looks familiar to her.

Clothing Damage: Bayonetta takes some cuts during the opening chapter in the graveyard, before doffing the disguise entirely to reveal her usual outfit.

Colossus Climb: Several of the bosses, notably Temperentia and Iustitia.

Combat Pragmatist: Bayonetta fights dirty. When she stuns an angel, she can use one of her Punish attacks; all are different (she can Slam, Slap, Stomp, Stab, Punch, or even Spank the angel) but all of them amount to dealing damage while the angel is helpless. She can also use a Punish attack to set one up for a Wicked Weave or Torture Attack.

Compressed Adaptation: The animated movie, obviously. More strangely though, some of the crucial plot twists like Bayonetta being Balder's daughter are revealed in the first minutes of the film. Some explanations are also skipped (like the reason Jeanne sides with the angels).

Concept Art Gallery: Available after the completion of the game. Includes art from characters, objects, locations, enemies and bosses.

Contractual Boss Immunity: Bayonetta's Torture attacks are very powerful, able to kill some rank-and-file angels instantly and inflict a great deal of damage to stronger ones. However, they don't work on bosses at all or even on some of the more powerful non-bosses. This is why she has other stuff that she only uses in Boss Battles; that's where the demon summoning comes in.

Convection Schmonvection: Lava won't hurt Bayonetta without it touching her. She can even walk on it with Fire Durga or Odette equipped to her feet!

Cool Car: Irenic, a type of angel that happens to look like an automobile. Lampshaded by its respective Flavor Text.

Crapsack World: It's played for a certain level of laughs and hidden under the relatively shiny graphics, but other than that, Bayonetta's world sucks. The Demons of Inferno are evil monsters who want to torment human souls forever, and bargaining with them guarantees an eternity of torment upon death. Meanwhile, the Angels of Paradiso are Eldritch Abominations that disguise themselves with exoskeletons of marble, gold and gems to appear more palatable to humans and hold just as much contempt for humanity as the Demons do, if not more. Their lowest ranks are literally nothing but cannon fodder to them, and this may or may not have something to do with the fact they're implied to be engineered from human souls.

Credits Gag: After Bayonetta defeats Jubileus, she crouches down upon the wreckage of Jubileus as it falls to the earth. The credits roll, but are then cut off by Jeanne appearing and declaring that the falling debris is still going to destroy Earth, provoking a shooting sequence to destroy the wreckage, and thus, the true ending cutscene. As in she literally stomps out the credits.

Cruel and Unusual Death: The boss deaths and just about all the Torture Combos, but especially on the Joys. Taunt her, then finish with a Torture Combo. See where the spike on the horse is sticking in?

Cutscene Power to the Max: The cutscenes always involve Bayonetta performing amazing aerial maneuvers, one-shotting enemies with her handguns, and performing moves that would put The Matrix to shame. Naturally, actual gameplay isn't so acrobatic, or her guns so damaging. Also note a few cutscenes in which Bayonetta uses the "Bat Within" evasion technique even if you didn't purchase it from Rodin's shop yet.

Damn You, Muscle Memory: A curious inversion − the dash moves and the launchers can be executed by locking the enemy, pushing the stick forward or backward and pressing the button. The dodge can also be done by locking, pushing the stick and pressing the jump button; all these optional inputs are obviously made for those used to the controls of Devil May Cry. This can be played straight when switching between the Wii U version of this game and Bayonetta 2. The default control scheme for Bayo 1 sets the R button to lock-on and the ZL button to switch weapons. This is reversed in Bayo 2's default controls, and can be bad enough to throw off a combo or two. Thankfully, you are given the option to change the controls so that both games are similar.

Bayonetta is the dark witch who is — technically — allied with Hell, and she kills one human in the whole game; the angels she fights, on the other hand, think nothing of slaughtering them.

The Umbra Witches in general are strongly hinted as being a case of The Sacred Darkness, working hand in hand with the Lumen Sages to keep the world functioning smoothly and preserve the flow of time.

Dark Is Evil: The Demons of Inferno may grant their power to Umbra Witches, like Bayonetta, but that power comes at the price of having to slay Angels and pay a daily tithe of halos or else be dragged into the Inferno. Also, death results in a witch being dragged body and soul into the Inferno for unspeakable torment.

Dark Reprise: "Blood & Darkness" is one to "Red & Black", signifying that Jeanne's not fucking around anymore.

Deal with the Devil: How the Umbra Witches gain their powers. The inevitable trade off for all the Crazy Awesome power is an eternity in Hell when they finally die (or get killed).

Degraded Boss: The climactic angel fights from the early chapters all return as regular enemies in later levels. You are also accosted by weaker knock-offs of the four Cardinal Virtues after killing their respective real deal.

Developers' Foresight: The trophies awarded at the end of each chapter are modeled after in-game characters. If you have not met that particular character in the story yet when you get their trophy, it will be modeled after a generic monk instead.

Did Do The Research: The game's angels look pretty bizarre when placed next to their counterparts from other media (for one thing, under their porcelain armor, they're studded with eyes), but the Bible states that angels spent a lot of their time trying to calm down the people they appeared to. Also, there's one enemy that looks like a locust with a scorpion tail, a sort of creature which is supposed to appear just before Christ's return and sting unbelievers to death. Of course, depending on whether you're drawing from the Bible or from later sources/artists, the accuracy will vary as the modern image of angels (people with wings) came out long after the Bible was written.

Dragged Off to Hell: First of all, it happens to any boss that you kill; it gets dragged to Hell by a bunch of clawing red arms. The same thing happens to Bayonetta on the game over screen if you choose not to continue. The second game reveals that all witches get this when they die, not just Bayonetta.

Dual Boss: Though they're not strictly bosses, "Grace" and "Glory" angels are always encountered in pairs (same for their stronger counterparts, Gracious and Glorious), and "Brave" angels are always encountered in threes. Fearless and Fairness also tend to appear together.

Dual Wield: Guns. Melee weapons. Chainsaws. You name it, she can double wield it. She can also dual wield twice - once for her hand weapons and once for her leg weapons. Is it Quadruple Wielding?

Easy-Mode Mockery: Type 1. Playing on Easy or Very Easy removes all Umbra Crows, removes Alfheim portals, and replaces health and magic upgrades (as well as LP fragments that are found rather than given) with halos, alchemy ingredients, Red Hot Shots or Angel Attack bullets. Normal Mode Mockery also ensues, as more than half of the Crows can only be found on Hard and above.

Eaten Alive: Gomorrah and Malphas do this when summoned to execute certain enemies.

Eldritch Abomination: Every boss. The regular angels qualify too. At least, once their armor cracks away and you see what they really look like...

Elemental Powers: Each of the four Cardinal Virtues represents an element: Fire, wind, earth, and water, and in that order.

Bayonetta spins her guns after every attack if you equip any guns in her hands. The Breakdance attack also makes Bayonetta perform multiple windmills while firing off any guns on her feet in every direction. There's also the Witch Twist, in which Bayonetta dodges an attack by spinning, before spiralling into the air and summoning a Wicked Weave.

Picking up the staff dropped by angels lets you do a spinning stripper pole dance that hits everything on the screen at once, though it uses up the weapon in the process.

The rocket does a 360 degree turn whenever you push either of the evade buttons. You can also pick up an Enchant and spin it around before flinging it like an angelic frisbee.

Jeanne acts this way to Bayonetta. Balder as well, since he is the Right Eye of the world while Bayonetta is the Left Eye.

Also, the Joys seem to be this to both Bayonetta and the Umbra Witches in general. In fact, all of their animations are based on Bayonetta's, to the point of using her Scarborough Fair Taunt as their own, along with using her "finger snap" animation for some moves, the same parry animation, and the same animation while summoning feathers that Bayonetta uses when making Torture Attacks.

Evil Is Bigger: The Bosses in this game are enormous and so are the demons that Bayonetta summons while fighting them.

Evil Knockoff: The shapeshifting Golem can mimic the demons Bayonetta summons throughout the game.

Evil Sounds Deep: Played straight with Fortitudo, Temperantia and Sapientia, but bizarrely inverted with Iustitia. The combination of a ridiculously high-pitched and slightly reverberating voice just adds to his creepiness. However, you can hear a deep voice coming from the other heads on Iustitia's body at times when he is attacking.

Aside from Jeanne, the Joy is a literal Evil Twin. Bayonetta reveals her by out-sexy dancing her.

Also, Queen Sheba looks exactly like Jubileus. Except much taller.

Escort Mission: Some levels have you protecting and rescuing Cereza. They are surprisingly well done and avoid becoming overly frustrating, possibly thanks to being brief (Cereza's regenerating health doesn't hurt either).

The final boss is a huge statue representing God that comes to life by absorbing someone, looking similar to The Savior.

There are also two demons that are based on ones from Devil May Cry; Scolopendra is an expy of Gigapede, and Phantasmaraneae is an expy of Phantom.

Excuse Plot: Not that the overall story is bad, but the whole deal with Bayonetta looking for a stone that she never even gets (presumably the Right Eye, not like the game ever tells you that) is only there to keep her moving from point A to point B. The story manages to remain interesting due to character interaction and Bayonetta's returning memories.

Faking the Dead: Pulled off to absurd levels as, even if a character plummets several vertical miles or is consumed by a fiery explosion, it's certain they'll be back on their feet in no time thanks to some unseen HandWave-able event (such as Luka's grapple even getting him out of explosions unscathed). Major characters who invoke this include, besides Luka, Rodin, Father Balder, Bayonetta and Jeanne (who merits a mention for not only surviving about seven certain deaths, but for managing to return after the Jubileus fight by using a motorcycle in space).

Final Boss: The CEO of the Ithavoll Corporation: Father Balder, the last of the Lumen Sages and Bayonetta's father. You fight him while falling from a 500+ story-tall building on pieces of exploding rubble while the entire building detonates and you play tennis with buildings and catch with Satellite Lasers while he violently murders your demonic summons one by one. To finish him, you steer a bullet made of lipstick into his forehead while Bayonetta says "don't fuck with a witch."

Finishing Move: A prompt to unleash a "climax" attack occurs at the end of any boss fight, whereupon Bayonetta summons a large demon to finish the enemy off.

Flavor Text: Descriptions of accessories in Rodin's shop go rather long, but they do highlight the important (i.e. gameplay relevant) parts for you.

Flunky Boss: During the Unexpected Shmup Level of Chapter 14, you face "Temperance," a knockoff of the second boss, Temperantia. who wouldn't be anywhere near as difficult if it weren't for constant swarms of Decor angels flying through and firing green energy bullets at you.

Earlier in the game, Bayonetta asks Jeanne "Who are you? And don't you dare say my long lost sister." At first Jeanne scoffs, but this becomes Fridge Brilliance when, way later in the Epilogue of the game, you pick up on what Jeanne says: "I am here to reclaim my Umbran sister!"

The wood carving with the inscription "Jeanne & Cereza". Do you think it's the little kid Jeanne keeps following around?

Also, when Luka, Cereza, and Bayonetta all meet for the first time at the airbase, Luka incorrectly believes that Bayonetta killed Cereza's parents. Ironically, she does just that later on, at least to Father Balder. Rosa died during the witch hunts from unrelated causes.

Gainaxing: Not much from our heroine, but it happens with the Joys occasionally, including during the Torture Attack.

Gambit Roulette: The entire twisted plot and most of its equally as twisted backstory turns out to have been one massive scheme perpetrated by Balder, in order to unite the Eyes of the World and thereby resurrect Jubileus.

Game-Breaking Bug: Route 666 has collision detection issues. Near the end, when you are forced onto a side route, you MUST jump a gap with no indication, then NOT JUMP a later one. Failing either of these will result in you clipping through the bridge and taking damage from falling... before making you run through that section again.

Gameplay Roulette: The gameplay is rather regular in the first twelve chapters, save for a brief passage in chapter 6 where you must fight a few angels using a lightpole, and the motorbike section in chapter 8. Then you fight a boss on a surfboard, ride said boss to lead him to the giant spider you just summoned (chapter 13), shot your way through a Space Harrier-like level (chapter 14), fight a mini-boss with a defense turret, have a platforming section, outrun a fireball (chapter 15), and have to direct a lipstick-bullet into the penultimate boss' forehead (chapter 16). Then in the Epilogue, you get another motorbike section (where, in the first part, you run towards the camera). Finally, after maiming the Final Boss, a mini-game makes you send its soul into the sun while avoiding to crash into a planet, and you have to destroy its body while falling in the middle of space.

Go-Karting with Bowser: The end credits (the real ones, not the ones that have the credits gag) include a scene where Joys can be seen dancing with Bayonetta in some scenes when the backdrop changes to Paradiso.

The Gods Must Be Lazy: One of the rare inversions of this trope. Not only are God and Heaven active and sending down mooks, but the forces of Hell only show up for finishing moves.

The Goomba: The Affinity angels, encountered in the prologue chapter they don't put up much of a fight, Bayonetta capable of wiping out a small platoon of them with just some handguns (before she gets the Scarborough Fair).

Groin Attack: If you use a Torture Attack on a Joy (a female angel), Bayonetta will summon a massive wooden horse with spikes along its spine. The Joy will attempt to run away in fear upon seeing it, but Bayonetta will capture her with a chain, pull her onto the horse and slam her crotch down onto the horse's spikes.

The Alfheim portals often (but not always) require backtracking through entire portions of a level, as they appear only after you get past a certain point or have done a certain action, without any indication whatsoever. One of them only appears if you shoot a specific trash can. And a few Alfheim challenges can let you clueless; like staying in the air 30 seconds with nothing to help you but an aggressive and uncooperative pair of Grace & Glory.

Finding all the crows that carry the Umbran Tears Of Blood without a walkthrough is quite a feat. Not only are they ridiculously difficult to spot and sometimes perched in the most uncanny places, their location changes depending on the difficulty mode.

Good luck trying to obtain all the weapons, by cheating or otherwise. One of them, the Sai Fung, can't even be obtained through the cheat phone that you could normally use.

Guilt-Based Gaming: Choosing "No" on the 'Continue?' screen causes Bayonetta to be dragged screaming down to Hell by multiple demonic hands.

Gun Fu: Guns. On. Feet. Including shotguns on feet. Including rocket launcher tonfa on feet. Sometimes, she does all this while poledancing.

Guns Akimbo: Both in her hands and strapped to her feet, just to screw with the trope some more.

Hell-Bent for Leather: Bayonetta's leather catsuit is not (technically speaking) leather, it's actually her own hair and witch magic. Which dramatically damages the sexiness for those who think too much about what clothing made of tightly-wound human hair would actually feel like.

Hoist by His Own Petard: The Lipstick that ends up embedded in Balder's forehead was apparently a gift from him to Bayonetta's mother, given to her when he was putting his plan in motion. Engraved in demon-text, it says: BALDER & ROSA, 19.3.1394, WITH LOVE UNTIL THE END OF TIME. And then, when he's actually killed, it's by getting crushed in Jubileus' eyelids, since he can no longer control it after Jeanne pulls Bayonetta out of the other eye.

Holy Halo: The angels, of course. The number of layers and elaboration of the design depends on the sphere of the angel in question. Jubileus, naturally, sports the most impressive one of all.

Hood Hopping: The level "Route 666" starts out as this, with you facing off a wave of lesser angels on top of vehicles.

Hyperspace Arsenal: Let's see - Bayonetta is dressed in outfit that has even less space than a Spy Catsuit to carry things, given's it's made out of her hair. Yet by the end of the game she can amass enough weaponry to become a virtual one-woman army.

I Fell for Hours: The game starts with this. Later repeated when fighting Father Balder.

Imposter Forgot One Detail: In one scene, Cereza is picked up by an angel (A Joy) masquerading as Bayonetta. The Joy forgets two details. First, it still has its halo. Second, it is fully clothed, despite the fact that the real Bayonetta is currently summoning a demon.

Item Crafting: Bayonetta can find ingredients in the environment and mix them up to make healing and attack/defense buff items.

Jiggle Physics: Just look at the Joys' chests during the Torture Attacks against them. The game only indulges in the jiggle-closeup if the Joys haven't been significantly flayed by Bayonetta's attacks.

The Lumen Sages seesaw between this and Light Is Good. They were part of the balance that the Umbra Witches worked towards before the Clan Wars... but they also started the Clan Wars because they side with the angels' plans for humanity.

Then there's the minor detail about your enemies throughout the game being angels, who really are not nice people.

Living on Borrowed Time: There's a reason you're dragged kicking and screaming to Hell if you choose not to continue after being killed.

Loading Screen: It also doubles as a practice arena so you can fine-tune the timing for your attack combos and so on. Hitting the Back/Select button on the controller also officially switches it to "practice mode" (where it doesn't exit when loading is complete).

Lolicon: A Beloved falls for Cereza. It even cries and tries to reach out for her just before getting killed off by Gomorrah.

Luck-Based Mission: A minor example, but getting the "Touch it and it will really hurt" Tear of Blood (counter-attacking 3 times in a row with the Moon of Maha-Kaala) is basically this since, neither in the game nor in the manual is there any indication on how counter-attacks work. You actually have to counter with frame perfect timing, like when you activate the bat form, but most people will just succeed by chance, without knowing how the hell they did it.

If you equip Lt. Col. Kilgore on Bayonetta's legs and do the combo YYYYB (Xbox) or ΔΔΔΔΟ (PS3), you will unleash one of these. Andfor an even bigger one, first equip Durga on both hands and feet, do the aforementionned combo, and switch to Lt. Col. Kilgore with LT/L2 the instant you hit B/O. God only knows if this is a bug or a secret combo, but it can pulverize all but the toughest angels instantly.

Kinships frequently fire salvos of angelic missiles known as "Loyalties". And it's infuriating.

Made of Iron: Bayonetta, Jeanne, and Rodin are understandable given their super-natural origins but Luka takes the cake. The guy suffers copious amounts of abuse throughout the game, up to and including getting getting nearly ripped apart by angels shortly before being blasted through multiple stone pillars and out the window of a skyscraper. The next time you see him, he's not only perfectly fine, but even snarks about how beat up Bayonetta looks. Badass Normalindeed.

Mage Marksman: Umbran Witches fight with a combination of guns and black magic, either to augment their physical abilities or to summon up demons or torture devices to execute their enemies.

Magic Is Evil: The source of all that Crazy Awesome magical power Bayonetta employs? Selling her soul to the demons of Inferno, most of which are genuinely evil monsters, which means all Umbra Witches suffer for all eternity. Since Bayonetta is apparently no longer mortal, she has to kill angels or risk damnation. Declining a continue in the Game Over screen causes a bunch of reaching hands to rip through the ground and pull Bayonetta, struggling and screaming, into Inferno.

Mama Bear: Bayonetta to Cereza, even though Cereza is not her actual daughter.

Marathon Boss: Jubileus. You fight her for a while and take away a bit of health, then avoid fire balls in a lava field, then ice balls in an ice field, then thunder balls in the middle of a freaking hurricane, then fight her directly again for a while, then bond her with your hair and take away the last of her health, then punch her from Pluto to the sun while avoiding to crash her into a planet. And finally you have to destroy what remains of her body. Geez. The whole process will take a good ten minutes even for the best players, and likely twice as much the first time.

Angel Slayer. 50 levels of fights against every enemy in the game, raises in difficulty every 10 levels, has multiple boss fights against Jeanne (including having to fight THREE AT ONCE), and even has a boss fight against Bayonetta herself. And you cannot continue if you die. So no save scumming — you're expected to do all this in one go. It can take at least 80-100 minutes to complete.

Rodin shares his name with the famous sculptor Auguste Rodin, and also runs a bar called "The Gates of Hell", which was also the name of one of the real Rodin's greatest works.

Subverted with Balder. In Norse mythology, Balder is the god of light, innocence, and the son of Odin. He is good and just. In the game, Balder is a dishonest entity who only wants to resurrect Jubileus.

Meaningless Meaningful Words: Balder spends his (very long) introductory cutscene talking nonstop without actually saying a whole lot. Jeanne is guilty of this as well due to her fondness of ranting about the Left Eye of the world, though not to the same degree.

Luka (during Balder's speech): It's all diarrhea of the mouth if you ask me.

Metronomic Man Mashing: Bayonetta can perform this as a follow-up attack after uppercutting mooks, slamming halos out of them.

Mini-Game: "Angel Attack!" is a shooting gallery that Bayonetta can play between chapters, aiming at targets to earn points to get things like Lollipops and other Power Ups. By collecting Arcade Bullets during the actual chapter, you earn more shots in the game.

Mistaken for Granite: Some levels have stone statues in the shape of various angels. You can smash them if you want, but some of them contain actual angels inside.

Money Spider: The currency of the game is called Halos. Despite being described as rare in the item description, every angel has them, and you get some every time you kill one. How many depends on just how well you beat the crud out of it.

Mood Whiplash: Played for Laughs in the beginning of the game. Save for Enzo's Large Ham, it's a very peaceful scene. As Bayonetta in her nun outfit prays for the deceased, rays of light appear and the Ominous Latin Chanting begins. A flock of angels descend from the heavens and, in slowmotion, Bayonetta jumps towards them to meet them... and promptly butchers them while Fly me to the Moon plays.

Murderous Thighs: In an early cinematic cut scene, Bayonetta uses her thighs to catch a ride on an Affinity, while shooting countless numbers of them out of the air, then using said thighs to spin the Affinity she rides it into the ground.

Ms. Fanservice: Bayonetta's the head of the National Organization of Ms. Fanservices. Subverted in that much like Varla from Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!, it's all "look, don't touch - or you'll pull back a stump."

My Future Self and Me: Near the end of the game, it's revealed that Bayonetta and Cereza are the one and same. It's not too hard to realize they're alike anyway.

Mysterious Animal Senses: It's implied that animals can see into Purgatorio, or at least sense the presence of someone in Purgatorio. Cats, understandably, don't seem too spooked by Bayonetta (seeing as she's a witch). Crows and doves, on the other hand, will flee if you get too close. Crows are often associated with darkness and witches. There are 50 specific crows in the game carrying Umbran Tears of Blood which you need to get the Climax Bracelet. Bayonetta herself can transform into a crow, and one of Bayonetta's Climax Attacks involves summoning Malphas, a giant crow demon.

New Powers as the Plot Demands: Probably justified by Bayonetta slowly recovering her memories as the story progresses, and thus her magic becoming more flexible. Her method of hot-wiring a motorcycle (by flipping the bird) is pure Rule of Funny, however. And oddly enough, Jeanne won't summon a demon in her fights unless Bayonetta's already used it on a boss.

Nintendo Hard: While the game is actually easier for new players to get into than most entries in this genre, that doesn't mean you can get lazy on Normal. Even after Normal is finished, the jump to Hard difficulty is staggering.

Noodle People: Bayonetta, especially notable in scenes with Cereza copying her cool pose, the latter having proportions of a porcelain doll. In one scene where the two are standing side-by-side, it is made clear that Cereza's height goes up to Bayonetta's knees.

Nonstandard Game Over: When Cereza is captured by a Joy disguised as Bayonetta, if you take too much time to save her, the Joy takes Cereza away, and you will have a Game Over screen with Cereza's doll on the ground instead of Bayonetta.

No Sell: Angels are capable of countering the time-slowing effect of Witch Time, allowing them to face you at 'normal' speed while the rest of the world around you is virtually frozen. Remember the opening chapter where you first face Angels during an extended Witch Time moment? The angels are initially trapped in slow-motion, but after torturing two of them, a short cutscene depicts one angel breaking free of its effect. There are also a few enemies that are immune to Witch Time entirely (evading their attacks won't trigger it).

Nothing Is Scarier: If you fail to punch Jubileus into the sun, instead hitting a planet, she rises up, smirks at you, then yells as she rushes the camera, and you are immediately taken to the death screen. You don't get to see what she does to you, but imagine beating up an almighty Goddess, and she is PISSED!

Number of the Beast: Route 666, a dangerous highway where the heroine can be flattened by oncoming traffic if she isn't careful.

Our Angels Are Different: Bayonetta's foes are warrior angels with marble skin, gilded armor and ornate halos. Basic Affinity/Applaud/Ardor angels have clearly birdlike designs. Beat on them a little bit and the facade cracks away, revealing horrible monsters with dripping bodily fluids, exposed muscle tissue and bizarre eyes where they probably shouldn't be. It is ambiguous as to if the marble is a disguise or if Bayonetta is simply skinning them alive.

During the final round between Bayonetta and Jeanne, you can evade and throw a freaking missile back at Jeanne with the right Action Commands. Of course, Jeanne catches it and sends it right back at you just as easily.

The same sequence can play out with a skyscraper when fighting Balder.

I did an over-kill attack which caused all the hair to fly off her body, soar up into the air and turn into a giant black dragon made out of hair which then bit into the boss and tore it to pieces all the while leaving Bayonetta stark naked because her clothing is made out of her hair too. Yes. A giant dragon made out of your own hair.

And of course, one of the most memorable lines near the end of the game:

Bayonetta: Don't fuck with a witch!

Press X to Not Die: There's one (if not more) in every level, including during boss battles. If you don't input the proper command in about 1 second (or input the wrong command), well, "The Witch Hunts Are Over".

The angels (not including the bosses) are all named alphabetically to when they appear in the game (with a few exceptions, such as Braves, which are one of the last enemies to show up despite their name beginning with a B). Because of this, the names aren't necessarily representative of the enemies, they're just picked because they sound particularly heavenly or good. "Applaud" doesn't actually cheer for his teammates, he just shows up early enough in the game to get a name that starts with "A". This is generally the case all the way up to the last angel in the game, introduced in Chapter IX. It's a giant flying battleship named... Kinship.

Bayonetta's name is a combination of two words associated with guns: Beretta, a well known gun manufacturer, and Bayonet, a knife attached to a rifle.

Purple Prose: Balder's introduction monologue would be half as long if he expressed himself with simple words. Even lampshaded by Bayonetta.

"Could you dispose with the riddles and tell me what these sodding eyes actually are?"

Quest for Identity: Bayonetta has remained asleep for the last 500 years and has nearly no memories of her previous life.

Rage Against the Heavens: Inverted: it is the heavens that are enraged against her. In contrast, Bayonetta really plain enjoys kicking angelic ass.

Rank Inflation: You're ranked with Stone (lowest), Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum, and Pure Platinum (highest) depending on how fast, how high the combos, all the verses, whether items were used, and how much damage taken at the end of every chapter.

Rapid-Fire Fisticuffs: With giant hair fists. It seems that this is a recurring trope in Clover/Platinum Games.

Rasputinian Death: Bayonetta subjects most regular angels to humiliating defeats, but she saves the most powerful and cruel attacks for the Cardinal Virtues.

Refuge in Audacity: The director stated in an interview that the development team kept cranking up the sex appeal until someone told them to stop. Given the team in question, it is entirely probable that the game is meant as a particularly over-the-top parody of recent action games that rely on sex appeal. Then there's the combat....

Samus Is a Girl: Jubileus is female, despite her name, leading to Artistic License – Linguistics as the name doesn't just sound masculine, it's a Latin second declension noun, which is gender-specific masculine. At least she's properly categorized as "Dea" (goddess).

Save Scumming: The game auto-saves after every verse, and often saves in the middle of a verse, or even in the middle of a boss fight. Since getting Pure Platinum medals requires you to never take damage, one may find themselves quitting and reloading a lot.

Scary Black Man: Rodin. This is a guy who can do Badass Drink Mixing and make it look awesome, take down the nastiest of demons to make into weapons of dark magic, and even hit angels for home runs. And if you give him a special item, he becomes Father Rodin. In this form, he is considered to be so powerful that even JUBILEUS HERSELF feared him.

Scenery Porn: Through the second half of chapter 15, you get to see Isla del Sol from the top of a very high building.

Sculpted Physique: The angels have this, at least to begin with. Specifically, note what Temperantia looks like at the end of the fight.

Sequence Breaking: In chapter 3, you can spare yourself the effort of picking up the magic hourglass in Paradiso by flying directly over the Broken Bridge near the end. Normally lava geysers hit you if you try to do that, but a yellow lollipop is enough to protect you. That also means you can literally skip the last five verses of said chapter.

Serial Escalation: Constantly. When you have characters like Joy making this sort of entrance, its awesome even for Crazy Awesome. Each boss fight is crazier and more insane than the previous one. The sheer volume of bosses and mini bosses is practically inconceivable and it only gets more awesome as time goes by. Special mention goes to the Mirror Match battle with Jeanne where you spend half the fight duelling atop an armed missile after it's been launched, and the final boss battle where Bayonetta takes on God herself in a floating cocoon in outer space. In the ends, whereas Devil May Cry escalates the action; Bayonetta accelerates.

Sliding Scale of Realistic Versus Fantastic: While the game is infamous for being safely placed on the absurd side of the scale, any Willing Suspension of Disbelief is long dead and buried before the conclusion. For example, while the plot starts with guns in shoes and hair demons, they seem pretty feasible when Bayonetta is murdering her father with lipstick to save her past self, before going on to punch God's soul into the sun in the final chapters.

Sophisticated as Hell: "If you get in my way, I will... how do the Americans put it? Oh yes. Bust a cap in yo' ass."

Sound Test: Available after the completion of the game. The tracks are sorted by appearance in the game, so if you want to hear a theme in particular, make sure to remember when it first triggered.

Squashed Flat: In a rather bizarre moment, Bayonetta can be flattened like a cartoon character when she is crushed by round objects. It is most likely that the Umbran Witches have the ability to flatten themselves so they can reduce the pain and impact, because if the angels are crushed by the Golem, they still stay three-dimensional, and take lots of damage in the process.

Stable Time Loop: Bayonetta's entire personality is based on subconsciously imitating herself from what she remembers when she was Cereza, before she was sent back to her own time (though she remembers it as her mother). It seems Balder's generally vague plan involved engineering this time loop to occur, so circumstances revolving around Bayonetta's sealing 500 years back will change, resulting in her memories being retained in the present.

The Stinger: During the credits, you play through 3 verses. Two are from earlier moments in the game. The last one picks up right where the cutscene leading into the credits left off. You have a hidden time limit, and failing to complete the verse during it results in no medal. It actually counts against you to fail these verses, as they are scored as part of the last chapter in the game.

Summon Magic: Forms a major part of Bayonetta's attacks, both as Torture Attacks (where she can conjure up iron maidens, chainsaws, guillotines, and the like), and as a Finishing Move to take out particularly strong angels and boss fights by summoning up higher demons and eldritch abomination-like creatures.

Summon Bigger Fish: Story-wise, most boss fights are really spent just softening the angel up for a proper mauling by whatever ravenous hellbeast Bayonetta summons with her hair. She averts the danger of the demon turning on her by the fact that she's as good as theirs anyway.

Super Mode: During some plot specific sequences, Bayonetta will let her hair down. This will have the effect of making all of her attacks Wicked Weaves, which are normally finishers to her combos.

Suplex Finisher: In the opening cutscene, Bayonetta slams about five or six angels into each other, then suplexes all of them simultaneously, causing their heads to explode.

Swiss Army Weapon: The last weapon you are likely to get, Rodin, that you earn after beating the Nintendo HardBonus Boss is a set of gold bracelets that can take the form of any angel weapon depending on the combo you do. One of these angel weapons is itself a Swiss Army Weapon in a smaller extent − a large bow that can separate into a pair of WhipBFS.

Talk to the Fist: Bayonetta LOVES doing this to the Cardinal Virtues... sometimes multiple times in one conversation!

The flashback encounter with Fortitudo in chapter 1 can become this once you get the Moon of Maha-Kaala (which allows you to deflect attacks). If you send his fireballs back at him instead of using your bullets, the fight can be ended in a few seconds.

The last fight with Jeanne has you playing hot potato with a missile in this fashion, and Father Balder has you do the same with a satellite that he forces to fall from space.

"Fly Me To The Moon" starts playing whenever Bayonetta is commencing with ass kicking. In the Cardinal Virtue fights, the boss music will be replaced with a more triumphant theme once you get them down to their last life bar.

There's also the songs for climaxing on larger mooks and finishing off a boss.

Third-Person Seductress: Quite possibly a parody of this trope since anything Bayonetta does that is supposed to be sexy usually comes off as completely hilarious instead.

Too Dumb to Live: Y'know, Luka, it's a really good thing that Bayonetta likes you. Otherwise, calling out the person you know killed your father, while she's armed and you're not, in an isolated area with no potential witnesses for miles around, would have shortened your lifespan considerably.

Torture Technician: Bayonetta is a rare heroic example using the Torture Attacks to slay her foes (although technically, this is payback, slaying them with the same methods they used to kill witches). They're hard to pull off and you can only use some of them against specific angels (or a few) but they can be downright cool if you do.

Trademark Favorite Food: Bayonetta is obsessed with lollipops. She's usually sucking on one in cutscenes, and almost all of the expendable power-ups a player can custom-make or win in Angel Attack are magical lollipops.

Troperiffic: The game displays a vast array of action game tropes, both retro and contemporary.

True Final Boss: Jubileus. You fight her after riding up a rocket into space on a motorcycle, then fight her in an enormous space cage while she attempts to flatten you into pavement as your rip away her powers over reality itself one by one, culminating in a final climb up to her and beating her face in, then summoning her Evil Counterpart Queen Sheba to punch her soul out of her body, then you proceed to control said soul as it careens around all the planets in the solar system and flies into the Sun, and then tear apart the pieces of her body one by one as you fall from space back onto earth.

Underground Monkey: "Applaud" angels are basically upgraded "Affinity" angels, as "Braves" are to "Beloveds". "Fearless" and "Fairness" angels likewise, and the "Gracious" and "Glorious" pair are stronger (but otherwise identical) angels to "Grace" and "Glory".

Unexpected Gameplay Change: Chapters 8 and 14, the first of which is a freeway chase, the second of which is a Shout-Out to Space Harrier. Also note that the boss battle of Chapter 12 takes place entirely on open water, with your only platform being a scrap of metal that you ride around like a surfboard (and much faster than your usual movement or evasion speed, at that).

Unexplained Recovery: Gomorrah has his jaw snapped and his neck twisted by Balder during the fight with him. By the sequel, though, he's perfectly fine.

Unflinching Walk: Unless you purposely make her run, Bayonetta constantly acts like she's on a catwalk, even after a massive amount of destruction has taken place.

Unreliable Narrator: Reading the bestiary is bound to confuse any player who cares, since almost every one of your enemies is described as a glorious and benevolent protector of good. This is quite at odds with the blink-and-you'll-miss-it hints that they originate from human sacrifice, or their callous disregard for human life.

Updated Re-release: The game was packed in with its sequel with a new coat of polish and a few new things. On the polish side: the game runs at 60 FPS, has Off-Screen Play, includes the touch screen controls from the sequel, and has dual audio between the Japanese and English voice acting. On the new side: costumes from a number of Nintendo franchises, with appropriate cosmetic changes to the gameplay. Halos can become coins, Wicked Weaves can be replaced with Bowser's limbs and there's also a Samus costume, complete with helmet-flipping action, among other things.

Video Game Cruelty Potential: In an otherwise goofy, lighthearted spectacle fighter, the Torture Attacks are rather wince-worthy in their sadism and don't look like they would be particularly out of place in God of War. Particularly jarring because they go without any comment whatsoever.

Villain with Good Publicity: Considering they are angels, all of the Angels of Paradiso have this, judging from how their journal entries all talk about their kindness, mercy, and neglect to mention such things as human sacrifice or the likelihood of the annihilation of creation.

Visible Sigh: In a scene after Temperantia is defeated, a Fearless is just missed being hit by a falling streetcar. It puffs out a cloud of white vapor in relief. Then the streetcar tips over on it.

The "Witch Walk" ability allows Bayonetta to walk on walls, ceilings, and some bosses; but it can only be used during a full moon (which is fortunately active during every boss fight).

Bayonetta can also Witch Walk on the halo platforms found in Chapter XV, despite there not being a full moon present. The only explanation is that the entire building is powered by the residual magic leftover in dead witches (you can see a few of the capsules in early parts of the level), so it may give Bayonetta her powers to walk on walls.

Wake-Up Call Boss: Jeanne. While earlier angel foes have totally predictable patterns, she doesn't. Moreover, she is close to a Perfect-Play A.I., blocking anything outside of her own attacks leaving you small windows to strike. So, this fight serves as a crash course in dynamic dodging and using Witch Time.

Was Once a Man: Angels, as revealed in a very early cutscene, were once religious zealots who committed Seppuku.

Wham Episode: Chapter XII onward. We get one massive revelation after another, the apparent death of a main character, Bayonetta actually getting canonically injured (as in, in a cutscene), the destruction of TWO of the Infernal Demons that you've been hinging on throughout the game, all topped of by Bayonetta falling smack-dab into the main villain's trap and coming uncomfortably close to causing The End of the World as We Know It. Woof...

World of Badass: Every single character in the game is badass in their own way. Bayonetta manages to kill angelical asses without losing her temper, Luka is capable of pulling Big Damn Heroes moments despite not having any superpowers, Jeanne is among the few opponents capable of making Bayo lose her temper and truly offering a life-or-death combat to her, and Balder is the only living being who can survive a Climax attack from Bayonetta.

You Killed My Father: The reason that Luka initially pursues Bayonetta. It turns out that Balder was the one responsible for it.

Your Princess Is in Another Castle: Done twice. The first time, after you defeat the apparent final boss, Father Balder, he comes back to life and imprisons Bayonetta in the body of Jubileus, setting up a Downer Ending until Jeanne pulls a Big Damn Heroes moment, setting up the fight with the real final boss, Jubileus itself. After you beat Jubileus, the credits roll, only for you to realize that you're not done yet, and you have to destroy Jubileus' physical body to prevent it from crashing into the earth.

Community

Tropes HQ

TVTropes is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available from thestaff@tvtropes.org. Privacy Policy